The heads of the Colorado Ballet and the Colorado Symphony work for harmonious seasons despite financial strains.
One-man band is tuned for multitask challenge
There has been no easing into the job for James Palermo.
The new president and chief executive of the Colorado Symphony, who has been on the job for just three weeks, faces big tasks virtually everywhere he looks:
• Continued planning for a $90 million renovation of Boettcher Concert Hall. Denver voters approved $60 million in bonds for the project in November 2007.
• Beginning in earnest a search for Jeffrey Kahane’s replacement. The music director announced last year that he plans to step down following the 2009-10 season.
• Negotiating a new union contract with the orchestra’s musicians. The existing agreement expires at the end of this season.
All that is on top of trying to navigate the financial shoals of a worsening economy, which has hurt the orchestra’s fundraising and spurred an attendance drop of 6 percent below projections.
Taken together, it might seem like more than enough to send Palermo screaming back to Chicago, where he was the much-respected head of the Grant Park Music Festival for 14 seasons.
But the Cleveland native, who holds a master’s degree in trumpet performance, has no plans to retreat.
“Yes, it’s a great challenge, but I guess I was ready for a change,” he said. “Although it’s a tough nut to crack, there is great possibility. I’ve hit the ground running, and I may not be completely successful, but I think we have a strong likelihood that we’re going to succeed.”
Inevitably, the darkening economy has made finances Palermo’s No. 1 priority. And like other arts organizations, the symphony is looking for ways to trim expenses and boost income.
To that end, the symphony is considering hiring an audience-development consultant to help bolster attendance through innovative marketing and sales strategies. Some of the changes could even be implemented before this season’s final concerts in June.
“We have a lot of potential,” Palermo said. “The next step is just to see what other orchestras are doing, examine best practices and then figure out how we can hop on.”
At the end of March, the Denver Center Theatre Company announced it would cut its budget next year by $1 million and present a shorter season with fewer plays.
The symphony is not planning to release its 2009-10 season for several weeks, but Palermo said that it, too, will reflect current economic realities.
While the lineup will probably consist of about as many concerts as usual, smaller, less-demanding pieces are being substituted for larger works that require supplementary musicians or involve other expenses.
The lineup will still incorporate major soloists, but the orchestra has been aggressively renegotiating lower performance fees where possible.
“We have to be very responsible with the resources we do have,” Palermo said. “We have to be responsive to what’s happening in the environment around us, and we also have to balance that with putting on a season that people want to hear.”
The orchestra is still working on its 2009-10 budget, and Palermo is not ready to rule in or rule out the possibilities of layoffs or other major cuts.
“We’re doing a lot of budgeting and rebudgeting,” he said. “We’re looking at five, six, seven different scenarios of things. It’s obvious that we have to earn more money and have a much tighter control on our finances because of the way our economy is playing out.”
Scrambling for solvency, aiming to boost its stature
When Jack Lemmon applied last spring to be executive director of the Colorado Ballet, the veteran administrator saw a company ready to boost its national stature, and he was excited by the chance to help.
“Colorado Ballet has been a little on the sidelines in the national dance world, and, clearly, the board wants to be much more integrated in and be a player,” said Lemmon, a board member of Dance/USA. “So, I thought it was a really interesting moment in time.”
While the company has not abandoned its goal of a heightened national profile, a plummeting economy forced Lemmon to switch his principal focus to financial survival by the time he took over his duties on Jan. 1.
Lemmon, who has headed several dance companies, including most recently the Louisville (Ky.) Ballet, does not yet know if the Colorado Ballet will be able to conclude its fiscal year at the end of June with a balanced budget.
“I think it’s harder than it was two months ago,” he said. “I’m pretty confident. Whether we actually end in the black or not, I’m not going there right now.”
Toward that end, the company announced Thursday that it hopes to achieve $100,000 in savings by laying off one full-time and one part-time member of its administrative staff and instituting two- to four-week furloughs.
“We don’t want to overreact, but we certainly don’t want to underreact,” Lemmon said.
The bright spot in the company’s finances has been ticket sales, with revenues up more than 9 percent from $2.9 million in 2007-08 to $3.17 million in 2008-09.
In December, the ballet bucked national trends by increasing paid attendance for “The Nutcracker” by 7,713 from 2007 — a 24.7 percent increase. That equated to a $100,000 boost to the bottom line.
But offsetting that good news has been a drop in contributions, with the ballet scrambling to make up a shortfall of several hundred thousand dollars.
Also not helping matters is the company’s continuing debt. But according to Lemmon, most of it — about $500,000 — is held by individuals, and not banks, making it more manageable.
So, how does Lemmon characterize the company’s health?
“I don’t think it’s horrible,” he said. “It’s certainly not great. I think we’re in the middle to weak.”
What is clear, he said, is that the company’s 2009-10 budget will be smaller than this year’s $7.3 million. How much the cuts might be and whether they will mean further layoffs is still up in the air.
“Like most arts organizations, we’re all about people,” Lemmon said. “We have dancers. We have faculty. We have stage crews. We have musicians. So, we’re going to have to figure out how to trim. How that actually plays out, we’re not going to know for a few weeks.”
Already underway has been what Lemmon called “internal retooling.” That includes improved financial data analysis for better management of expenses, and a streamlining of the ballet’s ticketing and subscriptions.
Regardless of the economic challenges the Colorado Ballet faces, Lemmon has not forgotten his original reasons for coming to Denver. He wants to position the company so it will be primed to rekindle its bid for national recognition when the dark clouds clear.
“There is this moment that I think a lot can happen,” Lemmon said. “The company looks phenomenal, and I can’t work for companies that I don’t believe in.”
